After7Only

Geraldo seemed to follow the mood of the Trumps in the Vivica vs Kenya fight. Up into that point he was on the Vivica is the winkest link train, until the Trumps seemed to support Vivica over Kenya. I've watched Kenya on HW and I believe she (and most of the other HWs) plays a character most of the time. Or at a very minimum play up certain parts of their personality for the cameras. I can't go as far as to think that she or any "reality star" are that vile IRL. Kenya is good at creating reality show drama, that's what they hired her to do. Vivica unfortunately sealed her fate as being 3rd place by calling Kenya out her name. No way she makes the finals. She was justifiably upset, but she did go g-fab.

This one of the few times that I felt Sasheer's natural speech pattern works well with the character she played. She fit in well with the golly-wow tone of the skit.

While I love the acitng on this show, I must say that Lee Daniels is knocking it out the park, directing the episodes. I'd guess a lot of the acting choices from Taraji and Terrance are at his direction. The quieter scenes, like when Cookie first walked into Lucious home, a lot about the characters that words could not convey. He definitely has a knack from inserting everyday realness into his projects.

Another scene where Taraji rocked it. She conveyed so much in that scene without saying a word. Pride, shame, nervousness, love... she got all that across.

I'll admit to only half watching this season, but I never realzed how ripped Jeremy was until this episode. Most of the muscle guys they cast on this show walk around shirtless preening all the time. But Jeremy seemed to keep it covered most of the time. One more reason he seemed like a standup guy. Would love to see him in an All-Star season.

I may be in the minority here, but I felt bad for Chantelle. I thought she very calmly and eloquently described her issue with being called 'Panda'. She explained that she didn't think it came from a place of negativity from Yu Tsai, but he seem to take in personally and accuse her of having an attitude, rather than just apologizing and agreeing not to use his pet name anymore. She seems to get accused of a lot of petty stuff that for whatever reason is never caught on camera. Changing makeup and hair, insinuating she hooked up with Keith, having a bad attitude (or at least any worse attitude than the rest of them). You'd think if she was that bad, they'd have more on camera. Shei is two faced for telling Keith anything.... I didn't get why Keith was so mad.... Unless something really did go down. The rest of them just seem extremely negative towards her, it would no wonder she kept to herself and tried not to engage in their drama.

The standup comedians almost always just do their standup routines during the monologue. Louis CK, and Kevin Hart immediately come to mind from recent memory. Unfortunately, SNL book very few actual stand up comedians as hosts. It's more often comedic actors like Jim Carey. I honestly don't want to see Chris Rock do a song and dance routine or a monologue written by SNL writers. Although he makes his money doing funny movies, his true talent is stand up comedy, so I was happy he choose standup material for his monologue. I enjoyed the show as a whole. Although the Rock/Leslie Jones skit was horrible. I do wonder if Sasheer will make until next season, especially with the addition of Leslie to featured status. I'm just not seeing much range from her. Even in her most prominent sketch on Saturday, the dance party Youtube channel with Rock, she could have taken it so much farther with her physical comedy. Aidy does oversexed big girl, Vanessa does quirky happy lady, Cecily and Kate are fairly versitle but Sasheer seems to be stuck on pretty, valley girl side kick mode. And pretty valley girl just isn't that funny.

I'm binge watched the last few episodes and the reunion. Chrisette is quite the special snowflake, isn't she? Is she an only child? Her recording her conversation with Chante really bothered me. Besides being illegal, what was the point? She said she wanted to play it back to Chante and discuss it with her. But she recorded it after episode 3. Why you just now bringing it up to her at the reunion? So what if she said she was being upstaged by newbies? From Chante's account, it sounds like the initial "mean girls" text and subsequent (recorded) conversation was meant to be a joke. Kind of made me wished she'd played it. Just felt like the girls were instructed to pick on Chante for the drama.

Anyone who watched Tim Gun's show, Under the Gun, would not be surprised of his 'interpretation' of Sandhya's PR experience. He took the same approach of siding with the 'mean girls/boys' against Natalie (I think that was her name) on that show. Natalie was bullied personally and berated for her designs, and Tim Gun joined right along with them.

One of my favorite scenes was where Dre was talking to the teacher about who is best qualified to discuss Harriet Tubman. At one point he says "Because I'm... (points to top of hand) and you're.... (points to palm of the hand)". This had me dying, as it's something my grandmother would do when talking about white folks vs black folks.

The look Mellie and Fitz shared after the park ranger told her the crime was solved.... was everything... that it all.

What you just described as telling jokes while not in mixed company is basically what happened to Denzel though. Would the/Should a member of whatever group you made a joke about be offended if they walked in and overheard the joke? Denzel was in another room having a one on one conversation with someone, and Will unfortunately walked in.

"Young and dumb" is my description of him not Denzel's. Otherwise I do agree with your statement. In that moment I'd like to kick him in the head. But I also realize that I don't need to continue to kick him over and over for the same offense. We've all been there at that age and said/done things that could be considered bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. isolated, edited, and yes, maybe out of context statements may not reflect the entirety of his character. Plus this is Top Model, I'm predicting a redemption arc in the next few episodes.

I'll take the unpopular opinion here and say that I still like Denzel. What he said and his attitude towards Will is 100% wrong, but it's really not an uncommon attitude for men his age. Doesn't make it right at all, but I rather just chalk it up to being young and dumb than label him a horrible person. I also think this will be a learning experience for him, and for others who watched the show.

Great comeback. And the perfect analogy. Which leads me to...... This is a show about a Black family trying to balance Black American culture within the confines of larger American culture. There's been tons of shows that have taken similar approaches from other American culture groups. Blue Bloods - Irish American family, Golden Girls - Italian/Sicilian, Swedish Americans... Movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you think it about culture rather than race, maybe that will help you see the difference.

Happened while Olivia was on the island I suppose. I'm sure we'll get at least 1 flashback espisode to catch us up on what happened during this period.

Brian J. White wouldn't be considered dark skinned. But unfortuantely the movie still fell into the trap of Black woman victimized by the darker skinned man and saved by the love of the lighter skinned man (Adam Rodriguez). Not all of his movies follow this route, but too many of them do, to not think it's he has some latent issues on colorism.

I remember seeing The Family the Preys and thinking, 'Wow Tyler's finally started to up his game with his writing', then his next Madea movie came out, and it was back to the same poor storytelling. I later read somewhere that Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates demanded major re-writes to the script before they would sign on, and a ghostwriter was hired to fix the script. Which explains why the movie felt 'different' than other Tyler Perry productions. I totally get that Tyler is writing for a his target demographic (and I am not in that demographic). But I still feel he can up his writing and storytelling game and still apeal to that demographic, plus a few others. He needs to realize that others outside of his target audience also watch his products and are influenced by the stereotypes he puts out there. Would love to see him use his influence to put other storytellers, in the spotlight who are different than him that could show a different segment of Black life and culture to world. But all he seems to put out are things that he controls and writes.

There's still a Part III, to this reunion. I have a feeling we'll hear more from Benzino/Thee thee, Joseline/Steebie than we really want/need to. The bulk of that show will all about them, with Joseline denying she's a coke head, and showing no remorse for what she did, Stevie sticking by his lady, and throwing shots at Benzino, Benzino and Althea outraged....just outraged... over everything that happened, and throwing shots back at Stevie/Joseline. From the phone call you could see Tami was obviously mad Waka wasn't there. As she probably should have been. Joseline would have never charged her had Waka been sitting next to her.

This is the first time that the CHAPI department here at SYTYCD (Camoflague HipHoppers And Poppers Inadequacies) got to work with a white female tapper. But they have sure had to work overtime covering for Valerie. If a smile and cheery attitude is all it takes to get you in the finals toward getting $250,000, I can sure paste one on and fly out there. It wouldn't kill me to put down the snark for a couple of months

I don't think so at all. They don't have the contemporary dancers do tap or ballet either. Those 2 genres just aren't ones someone can fake their way through and make look good. Everyone has had to dance outside their genre multiple times. Hip hop is far from artless. There's a reason that many of the most popular routines and many of the more popular dancers have been hip hop. As for tonight show, I was far more interested in the all stars than the contestants. I forgot how heavenly Will was....

I appreciated the hip hop reference. It's probably closer to what a typical "club set" from him would be like. To win this show however, you have to be mainstream, which is something Rod Man has been extremely good at adapting his style to, and where comics like Karlous Miller failed.

That's problematic in a different way though. His particular diction is a core building block of his gimmick, of his comic persona I mean. If he's TOO careful, he'll wind up sounding well... too white.To me it sounded like he said "My hitter, my hitter". I don't really get the joke if it's that, but that's okay. Just the delivery by itself was pretty funny and it was a pretty small piece of the whole routine. Yes it was "My Hitta, my Hitta". It's a line from a rap song.

I don't know if any have launched a line directly from the show. But I know just yesterday, Nene Leakes and Melissa Gorga were on HSN selling clothes and jewelry. It might not be Jessica Simpson level, but most would consider pretty successful. Now for Erica's line, when she was describing it, I was hoping that it would be different, something for the regular woman. But then I see Karli in her dress, and it's the same ole same ole hoochie gear.